The State of Texas Children

A new report indicates things are looking good for Travis County's children in the areas of education and premature death but also lays out some troubling stats on poverty. The State of Texas Children 2007, authored by the Center for Public Policy Priorities (www.cppp.org), a nonprofit research organization that advocates for low- and moderate-income Texans, says that statewide, maternal and infant health care and infant mortality rates are improving, as teen births continue to decline. "At the same time, work remains in other areas," says Frances Deviney, Texas director of Kids Count, a national research group affiliated with the CPPP. "Statewide, low birth weight and infant mortality rates have increased, child poverty is up for the fifth straight year, unemployment has increased, and Texas continues to have the highest rates of uninsured children in the nation."

Those trends generally hold true in Travis, Texas' fifth-largest county. The surges in poverty could be a byproduct of surges in population, especially among minorities. Travis Co.'s total population shot up 10.4% from 2000 to 2005; while the rise in white population was negligible (about 12,000 people), the black population rose 10.7%, and Latinos rose 28%. (Mean­while, the percentage of students enrolled in bilingual and English as a second language programs rose from 12.4% in 2000 to 19.6% in 2007.) That was accompanied by a rise in poverty from 9.9% to 14.3%, including a shocking rise in child poverty from 13.6% to 18.4%.

This population shift is probably due to the chasing of economic opportunity in urban areas – the state's major metropolitan areas (except El Paso) have seen rises in child population from 4% to 36%, while many rural counties (especially in West Texas) have seen drops of up to 38%. The number of Travis Co. kids up to 4 years old enrolled in WIC (the United States Depart­ment of Agricul­ture's nutritional program for women, infants, and children) rose from 28.8% in 2000 to 33% in 2005, while children receiving free or reduced-price lunch at school went up from 50% in 2000 to 59% this year.

On the up side: From 2000 to 2004, the percentage of teenagers giving birth dropped from 11.9% to 10.3%, although infant mortality and births to women who received inadequate prenatal care rose slightly. Also, deaths of children younger than 15 dropped from 19.9 to 14.4 per 100,000 from 2000 to 2005, and over the same period, the number of teens ages 15-19 who died violent deaths dropped dramatically, from 52.1 per 100,000 to 29.9 (although paradoxically, the number of juvenile violent-crime arrests rose from 195.2 per 100,000 to 277.4).

Most encouraging for Austin-area educators: From 2003 to 2007, the percentage of students passing the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills test rose in every grade level except ninth-grade math.